NEARLY 42 years ago, terrorist bombings at two Birmingham pubs killed 21 people.

The killers have never been found and brought to book for their crimes, and the police force with that task has instead spent decades trying to prevent anyone from getting to the truth.

West Midlands Police, whether out of sheer incompetence or something more malign, ignored two warnings beforehand.

Afterwards the force fitted up six Irish men: Hugh Callaghan, Paddy Joe Hill, Gerard Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker.

In custody, they were tortured until four of them broke under the brutality and signed confessions — pure works of fiction.

In 1991, after 16 years in prison, the six’s convictions were quashed and they were freed.

Roll on another quarter-century, and coroner Louise Hunt has decided, correctly, to reopen the inquests into the bomb deaths.

But not before having to hear West Midlands argue that she didn’t have the jurisdiction and, reading between the lines, should keep well away.

To top it off, a further garnish of injustice, the files from a 1993 Devon and Cornwall Police probe of West Midlands were specially locked away for 75 years — until 2068.

While police investigating police often has predictable results — it was West Midlands, after all, which conducted the first “probe” into South Yorkshire’s behaviour at Hillsborough — the lifetime of secrecy hints that someone wants to be dead well before people get their hands on the report.

Forty-two years and we still do not know who killed those 21 people. The police are singularly uninterested in finding out.

It could be called a travesty of justice but this is par for the course.

Keeping just to the same vein of fabricated bomb charges we recall the Guildford Four — quashed after 14 years — and the Maguire Seven — quashed after 15 years.

In every case, the police, prosecutors and judiciary responsible for these fit-ups have escaped unscathed.

And these are “just” cases where the authorities supposedly “get it wrong,” let alone cases where they’re tooled up to fight the enemy within — such as at Shrewsbury or Orgreave — surveillance and abuse of peaceful activists, or the common or garden deaths of people in custody.

Something is rotten and the stench will only worsen if the culture of cover-up is allowed to continue.

No reforming EU

THE European Commission’s wrangling over potentially cancer-causing herbicide glyphosate neatly shows the problem that faces well-meaning people who want to change the European Union from within.

The commission wanted to extend glyphosate’s licence for 15 years, ignoring health concerns as well as strong opposition by the European Parliament.

It has been forced to moderate its position — to nine years, then seven, now 18 months — as member states cool on the chemical, but not before cancelling votes as it became clear the commission wouldn’t get all of what it wanted.

However, for the next year and a half, it does have what it wants — and glyphosate will continue to be used in public parks and children’s playgrounds, over the specific but meaningless opposition of MEPs.

Ultimately this is a fringe issue. A single chemical is one thing, but the proponents of Remain-and-reform have yet to say how they can achieve substantial change when it comes to core neoliberal principles of the European Union.